Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned embarrassment? Where today is that wicked pang that kept generations of slobbery emotions in check and prevented stupid people from doing stupid things in public?
It was the thermo-nuclear threat of its age, the big stick that made sure a fellow wouldn’t marry the upstairs maid and her gypsy sister before running away to Ceylon.
Mutually Assured Embarrassment ran the British Empire, and never before or since have so many people behaved so well in public (give or take the odd gunboat and cavalry charge). The demise of shame, an extinction aggressively encouraged by the Dr Phils of this world — banal, Midwestern gurus wrapped in a snug blanket of self-love — has perhaps manifested itself no more clearly than on the sports field, specifically in the bizarre rituals of self-worship we have come to accept as celebration. Fifty years ago, if a cricket team took a wicket, everyone would stand around looking a little sheepish (as if they’d broken a vase) and furtively shake hands.
If it was Bradman’s wicket as part of a hat-trick in a Test at Lords, the bowler might get a hesitant pat on the back from his captain before being banished into the outfield and told to try harder.
That was then. Two years ago England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff ripped off his shirt after taking a wicket, revealing a mass of blindingly white, undulating flesh that was more familiar with Crunchies than crunches. As it wobbled and heaved, the slow realisation sank in that finally all sports had become football. This is now.
One needs only to see the ecstasies of delight, the Babylonian excesses indulged in when some fifth-division football club in Peru manages to secure a 0-0 draw against a rival outfit in Bolivia, to know the scale of sporting achievement has nothing to do with the scale of the celebrations.
With all the hugs and back-thumps doled out by the Springboks after their Argentinean misadventure on Saturday, you’d think they’d won a World Cup quarterfinal.
Perhaps they were just jazzed because Corné Krige got through a whole match without spontaneously splintering a femur. It’s not called “rugby football” for nothing.
Football, for those who don’t know, is that pantomime where fashion models with spindly shins fall down all the time and earn €1,2-million for every second
they lie writhing in agony.
Their contracts, which they sign with a thumbprint or a spidery X, stipulate that they must change their hairdo at least thrice a year, and that whenever they score a goal they must remove their shirts and do a painful and awkward swan dive on to their stomachs. Thankfully formula one drivers have not yet gone soccer.
A good thing, too, as swan dives on the track could result in being run over by a Minardi, still three laps off the pace. Likewise, golfers have somehow restrained themselves from stripping naked and cavorting in water hazards whenever they two-putt. Thank heavens for small mercies.
Had global sport gone soccer earlier, what effect would it have had on the general public? Would Einstein have torn off his cardigan, done a frenzied lap of his study and slid to a gyrating stop on his knees?
Would Buzz Aldrin have had to give Neil Armstrong a stern talking-to after he tried to wriggle out of his space suit and do a 45m swan dive out of the Eagle?
One can only imagine the scenes of carnage had Dr Chris Barnard, heart heroically transplanted, shed his scrubs and flung himself prostrate on the gory floor, inviting the assisting surgeons and nurses to pile on—
But there is hope for the future. This week Fifa outlawed the removal of shirts in football matches while celebrating goals.
It’s definitely a start, but for now we’ll still have to live with rosary-kissing, cartwheels, the promising of firstborn children to the goalkeeper, kissing with tongue and sacrificing of a dozen white bulls on the altar of Mars.
At least Andrew Flintoff isn’t taking off his shirt any more.